Tessa DuderTessa Duder

Tessa Duder is the author of more than 45 books, including her best-known novel Alex, which formed a quartet of books. She has been awarded the Katherine Mansfield fellowship to Menton, an OBE, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Waikato. Tessa was born Auckland in 1940.

The golden age of children’s writing in New Zealand is now

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Tessa Duder provides a brief history of children’s literature in New Zealand – and finds multiple reasons to be cheerful about the state of play in 2017. One grey, misty morning in the Auckland suburb of Mt Eden, a 43-year-old teachers college librarian is walking to work. His eyes are drawn up to that shrouded, … Read more

A brief history of feminist literature in New Zealand: Tessa Duder on her classic novel Alex

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All this week the Spinoff Review of Books looks at the new memoir by former Green MP Holly Walker. Today: we asked author Tessa Duder to respond to the chapter which credits her classic YA novel Alex as a formative influence. During the winter of 1986, I wrote the first book of the Alex quartet. … Read more